1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cutting container device for food products, in particular hard cheese, suitable for preserving a product being available in the form of one or more whole blocks and for dispensing such product in grated, shredded or flake form.
2. Description of the Related Art
Containers are known having incorporated a grating tool, suitable for receiving a certain amount of a food product such as a hard cheese to be grated (for example parmigiano or pecorino, in the form of one or more blocks) intended for being sold as cheese packages, substantially for a disposable use.
One particular device is shown and described in Swiss patent CH 682 714 in the name of NESTLÉ, which relates to a device for dispensing a food product available in the form of a crumbly block, in particular pot-herbs in the form of compact frozen blocks.
The '714 device is made of a glass-like container body with polygonal section suitable for housing the food product to be dispensed, whose mouth is closed by a cutting tool group comprising a disk provided with cutting edges and an annular body supporting the disk being securable to the container body and suitable for rotating with respect to it in a plane perpendicular to the container body axis.
A threaded stem, integral with the disk, is oriented perpendicularly thereto so as to be axially arranged inside the container body, and a compression plate, parallel to the disk, is fit thereon and it is provided with an internally threaded central through-passing hole, with threading suitable for the stem thread.
One or more blocks of the food product to be dispensed are arranged within the glass-like container body between the compression plate and the cutting tool, and they are thrusted by the plate against the tool.
This plate is provided for screwing along the stem starting from an initial position wherein it is arranged in correspondence with the bottom of the container body, towards the mouth thereof, i.e., approaching the tool, so as to press, with continuity, one or more blocks of food against cutting edges, while this is grated. The approaching of the plate occurs by rotating the container body with respect to the base or vice versa.
Devices of this kind are typically provided for a single use. Once the contained product is finished the entire package is thrown away and a new one is bought.
It is possible to envision the above-described device in a package of the refillable type, providing the possibility of unscrewing or separating in another way the tool group from the glass-like container for setting the mouth thereof free and allowing the introduction of new blocks of product.
However, when the device has exhausted the product, it is in the configuration wherein the compression plate on the axial stem has reached a stroke end position near the tool itself, whereby when refilling it is necessary to manually “unscrew” the plate for the entire stroke, i.e., for the entire length of the stem, for the purpose of bringing it back to a starting position.
Only when the plate has been brought back to the top of the stem, or even unthreaded therefrom, is it possible to refill the device with the product.
It will be immediately understood how the “refilling” operation results thus to be very expensive, requiring much time for being brought to an end, so that it cannot be faced at the same time when the table is already set.
A further drawback of the known technique is given by the fact that in the described refilling operation, it is necessary the direct manipulation of some internal components of the device, which can be dirtied or contaminated, thus compromising the hygienic preservation of the refilling product.